(Monday, May 11, 2020)– The Russians celebrated the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II last week, but it was not until August of 1945 that the Americans, who were in alliance with the said Russians and the British, dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Presumably, this was how Washington chose to end the war in the Pacific theater which had begun when the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

The German war effort, in which the Germans were in alliance with the said Japanese and the Italians, had collapsed from April of 1945, and the Italians had caved in before that. My point is that the opinion of most scholars is that there was really no need for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombings represented modern Armageddon for the Japanese people.

So now, the students of Belize should be asking what this coronavirus represents. Surely the present generations of Belizean youth and students have never been confronted with anything like this before.

My second point is that my Belizean generation of youth and students, those of us born after World War II had ended, were not taught in school in British Honduras about the absolute horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was when I went to university in the United States in 1965 that I found out about atomic and hydrogen bombs – the nuclear age, where man had developed the ability to destroy the human race and planet earth.

All around the world in the 1960s, young people and students were terrified by the nuclear age, and they began to rebel in various ways. We were scared of being annihilated if the nuclear powers of the world began shooting their missiles at each other, as the United States and Russia had come close to doing in a dispute over Cuba in October of 1962.

When it was that the major powers of the world began to focus on investing in methods of modern biological warfare, I really can’t say. All I know is that Covid-19 has turned our world upside down, and I don’t see any forum where Belize’s brilliant young students are involved in enlightening themselves and the rest of us about the present insanity.

If there is one thing we Belizeans have learned here, it is how insignificant and powerless we are. It is for sure that we older folk who are not dedicated to a specific body of religious beliefs are scared. The thing is, surely it cannot be a benevolent divinity who is responsible for the Covid madness. On the other hand, Satan is not supposed to be so powerful.

Blessings be upon us all.